Cedars restaurant... I mean, The Saffron Grill.

If you've lived in Seattle and have any associates at all who know the University District, then you know The Cedars restaurant. Cedars was an Indian restaurant where the fare was inexpensive, the portions generous, the food absolutely amazing, and the long line to get infuriating. In the winter, people would be packed into the waiting room like sardines, all waiting for their turn. One of the hallmarks of the Cedars was the bell, a desktop call bell that the kitchen manager rang loudly and furiously whenever hot food was cooling on the counter.

The owner, Muhammed Bhatti, recently sold Cedars. There's apparently a tale there, but I don't know and I'm not going to gossip on it. He has, however, opened up a new restaurant in the Northgate district called Saffron, and recently Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I trooped up there to see how it was.

The prices are a bit higher, the food just as good, and the ambiance much more laid back than before. Mr. Bhatti greeted us at the door and about a minute in I laughed when I heard a familiar sound from the kitchen. "You kept the bell," I said.

"Oh, you remember! Yes, yes. You see that?" He pointed to an unlit indicator on the wall. "That has lights to tell the waiters when food is ready. Nobody ever paid any attention to it. The bell, it works."

We had the Vegetarian Delight appetizer, Tandoori chicken meal, and the Royal Biryani with chicken, which we shared among the three of us. Kouryou-chan absolutely delighted in the mango lhassi, liked the Royal Biryani rice and the Tandoori chicken somewhat, and could pass on most of what came with the appetizer, although she declared the paneer pakora wonderful. I wished we hadn't had to come down to her level and could have put some spice into it, but really, it was all as wonderfully delicious as we recalled Cedars being, and I'm glad Mr. Bhatti still has a restaurant going with his name on it.

Grammatical questions: Surge

I was writing a sex scene this morning and I wanted to describe my character's ardour as 'resurgent' before realizing that that didn't make sense. It was, after all, the first time he was having this experience. So now I'm left wondering: if you can be resurgent, can you resurge? Can you be surgent? What about insurgent? Is it possible to insurge somewhere?

Getting caught up.

For folks posting to Pendorwright: I would like to apologize if you’ve made a comment in the past six weeks or so and not heard from me in response.  The mail setup for Pendorwright was broken, and I barely noticed, and when I did two weeks ago, I didn’t have time to get it fixed until recently.  A whole swamp of emails came flowing in this morning.  If there’s anything you wanted to ask me, please feel free to re-ask.

This entry was automatically cross-posted from Elf's writing journal, Pendorwright.com. Feel free to comment on either LiveJournal or Pendorwright.

Sshhh! I'm in disguise!

This afternoon, while I was walking to my haircut appointment, I walked passed Gameworks in downtown Seattle. Since I had a little time to kill, I slipped in to see what was what. I went in the back way, through the bar that's attached to the place. Nobody stopped me.

It seemed very odd, at first: for one thing, there was a buffet up in the back lounge, and secondly, it was pretty empty. There wasn't nearly the usual crowd there. I haven't been there in months, so at first I chalked that up to the economic downturn. But more than that the people there were all young and very, very geeky. Gameworks usually does a good job of attracting a diverse crowd, but everyone here was in their 20s or early 30s, and (and I hate to write this but, dammit, it's true) the number of bad complexions was far outside the standard deviation.

I didn't find what I wanted (a working Defender), so I tried to leave. The main doors were locked! Concerned, I went back out through the bar, then around to the front again to see if there was something indicating why those doors were locked.

A sign read Closed for private event: Microsoft Silverlight 2 Release Party.

I walked away, whistling innocently.

Miscellany

In no particular order.

I'm fighting a head cold. So far it has manifested as a sore throat, but this evening my allergies kicked on and no amount of drugs seems to be holding back the tide. My sinuses are clogged and I feel awful.

I wrote another 2,400 words in the past two days, completing episode two of a five episode Journal Entry arc. Omaha's right; I'm in a rut. It's not my best work, but at least I'm writing again. I also wrote the first 800 words of a Valentine's Day Special Episode (but not a "very special episode"), which was mostly sparked by some amusing dialog with a friend of mine.

Omaha and I were discussing this picture of George W. Bush on inauguration day, and the feelings he must have been having knowing he was going to go down as a tragic president, one of the worst, and that he was about to stand on stage and face the rebuke of the American people and his successor. Kouryou-chan asked if we thought he was such a bad president, and Omaha and I agreed that yes, more or less, he was certainly one of the most incompetent and fundamentally wrong-headed men to hold that office, and that most Americans agreed with this assessment. "And yet," Kouryou-chan said, fluttering her eyelashes with innocence, "I can't help but feel a pang of pity for him."

Okay, who raised this kid?